10/21/2015: Thank you every for attending Common Ground and making it a wonderful day of engagement. The Gallery & Resources page is now up with videos and photos of the day! Feel free to tag yourself/add more photos on Facebook. And if you'd like to contribute to the Common Ground 2015 journal, please feel free to contact jxiao@americanhumanist.org

7/30/2015: Check out the schedule and bios page for a full schedule of conference events with the bios of the confirmed panelists.

Common Ground 2015 is an all-day conference, FREE and open to the general public, that aims to bring together religious believers, secular humanists, and nonbelievers in conversation in order to gain perspective on each other’s ways of seeing the world, while embracing commonalities in our human experience that bring us together for social change. Through four panel sessions, workshops, and breakout sessions (click here to see the detailed panel descriptions, schedule, and speaker bios), attendees will hear academics and leaders from national and local organizations discuss views on finding meaning in life, ethics and values, and how to collaborate for social action.

Our vision and highest hope is that this event will culminate in social activism through interfaith organizations, tri-sector leadership, citizen activism, and more in any arena of social justice or “doing good” for the world.

This year’s conference was inspired by a 2013 dialogue, also titled “Common Ground,” hosted by Xaverian Missionaries in Scotland, UK. It was a weekend gathering which brought together people of all faiths or lack thereof, students and academics, clergy and lay leaders to encourage understanding, empathy, social action, and collaboration between nonbelievers and believers, culminating in a presentation in front of the Scottish government. Feel free to browse the brochure and the programjournal for 2013.

Common Ground 2015 is sponsored by the American Humanist Association, Xaverian Missionaries and Rutgers University. Thanks to the Humanist Community at Rutgers and the Episcopal Campus Ministry at Rutgers for their planning support.